Jean-Paul Gaultier - Fashion Designer Encyclopedia

Born:
Arcueil, France, 24 April 1952.
Education:
Educated at the École Communale, the College d'Enseignement,
and at the Lycée d'Arcueil, to 1969.
Career:
Design assistant, Pierre Cardin, 1972-74; also worked for Esterel and
Patou; designer, Cardin (U.S.) Collection, working in the Philippines,
1974-75; designer, Majago, Paris, 1976-78; founder, Jean Paul Gaultier
S.A., from 1978; menswear line introduced, 1984; Junior Gaultier line
introduced, 1987; furniture line introduced, 1992; licenses include
jewelry, from 1988, perfumes, from 1991, and jeans, from 1992; created
controversy with line

By injecting kitsch into couture, Jean-Paul Gaultier has redefined the
traditionally elegant trappings of Paris fashion. He is a playful,
good-natured iconoclast, glamorizing street style and cleaning it up for
haute couture. By turns surreal but never completely bizarre,

rebellious but always wearable, he has produced seductive, witty
clothes which redefine notions of taste and elegance in dress.

Gaultier's eclectic source material, inherited from punk via the
fleamarket, and an astute sense of the origins of style mean his clothes
make constant historic and literary references, as opposed to the cool
modernism of contemporaries such as Issey Miyake, displayed in his use
of heraldic motifs in the late 1980s or a collection based on
Toulouse-Lautrec in 1991.

Gaultier challenges orthodox notions of the presentation of gender
through both male and female dress and ignores the stereotypical
femininity normally paraded on the catwalks of traditional Parisian
haute couture. During his employment at Jean Patou, Gaultier recognized
how most couturiers ignored the female form at the expense of the
construction of a particular line. He was, on one occasion, horrified to
see a model having to wear heavy bandages to suppress her breasts in
order for the dress she was modelling to hang properly. This impulse
eventually culminated in a controversial series of negotiations of the
corset, stemming from his interest in the exaggerated definition of the
female form it produced. In the 1980s he redefined this usually private,
hidden garment, whose traditional function is to provide a structure
from which to hang the more important outerwear, by recreating it as
outerwear itself. One of these, the Corset Dress of 1982, commented
astutely on femininity, constructing the breast less as a soft malleable
object of passive attraction and more as an object of power, a female
weapon, whilst at the same time alluding to the conically stitched bras
of the 1950s sweater girl— a particularly tacky glamor. These
ideas achieved mass attention when Gaultier designed the costumes for
Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour in 1990.

By 1984 Gaultier had decided to move more directly into mens-wear.
Through personal experience he could find nothing he really wanted,
particularly in terms of sizing, and even unstructured Armani jackets
seemed too small. He noticed that men had been buying his women's
jackets because of the unusual fabrics and cut, so he began his seminal
reworking of the pinstriped suit for both men and women. He displayed a
traditional male wardrobe by redesigning such classics as the navy
blazer and Fair Isle jumper and dismantling clichés of masculine
styling by producing skirts, corsets, and tutus for men. During one
notorious catwalk show, female models smoked pipes and men paraded in
transparent lace skirts. This acknowledgement of male narcissism and
interest in the creation of erotic clothing for men, as shown in the
Man-Object Collection of 1982, influenced designers such as Gianni
Versace into the early and mid-1990s.

Gaultier is perhaps best associated with the rise of popular interest in
designer clothing in the mid-1980s. His redefinitions of traditional
male tailoring made his clothes instantly recognizable amongst so-called
fashion victims in most of the major European capitals, using details
such as metal tips on collars and extended shoulder lines. Structured,
fitted garments like jackets were reworked, being cut long and slim over
the hips to mid-thigh to give an hourglass shape to the wearer's
physique.

Gaultier has always been interested in new developments in fabric and
intrigued by the design possibilities of modern artificial fibers, and
is known for using unconventional fibers like neoprene. He uses fabrics
outside of their usual context, such as chiffon for dungarees, resulting
in a utilitarian garment being produced out of a delicate material
traditionally associated with eveningwear. This juggling with expected
practice directs him to produce items such as a willow-patterned printed
textile incorporating the head of Mickey Mouse, and Aran sweaters
elongated into dresses with the woollen bobbles taking the place of
nipples.

Gaultier rebels against the old school of Parisian couture but, because
of his years of training within its system under Pierre Cardin, Jacques
Esterel, and Jean Patou, he is a master craftsman. However avant-garde
his collections may seem, they are always founded in a technical
brilliance-based inventive tailoring and are able to convince because of
the technique. While his kitschy designs in the late 1980s and early
1990s gave Gaultier a reputation as the enfant terrible of fashion, his
fall 1998 collection-which featured beaded fisherman's sweaters
and formal tartan skirts—was one of many that wowed critics by
being innovative yet wearable and elegant. Gaultier has noted that the
1990 AIDS death of his lover and business partner influenced his designs
by making them simpler and more sober, with less aggression and
toughness. After a time, however, he decided his designs were becoming
too classic and he went back to making the sexy, irreverent clothing he
had been known for.

Gaultier's interest in pulling together diverse cultures has
continued, with his fall 1993 line being one of the most controversial
examples, inspired by the traditional apparel of male Hasidic Jews.
Other collections in the 1990s were influenced by the dress of
Mongolia, the punk subculture of London, and Eskimo culture, among
others. Mixed in were departures such as a 1996 tribute to Pierre Cardin
and a 2000 line inspired by the 1970s television series
The Love Boat.
Gaultier admits he watches television constantly, sometimes several
programs at a time, to gain inspiration.

Gaultier's profile has been raised by his work as a costume
designer for films such as Peter Greenaway's
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
(1989), Pedro Almodovar's
Kika
(1993) and Luc Besson's
The Fifth Element
(1997). He has also hosted a comedy series,
EuroTrash,
on British television and created a line of furniture which included a
two-person chair on wheels and a dresser constructed from luggage.

Gaultier opened his own couture house in 1997, becoming just the second
designer in three decades to create couture under his own label. Some of
his most creative and praised collections have occurred since that time.
From a strapless, feather-enhanced denim ball gown to a seashell-bodiced
dress with a feather-covered skirt, he has won a reputation for apparel
combining outrageous features with high-quality tailoring and detailing.

French classic luxury goods company Hermés purchased a 35 percent
stake in Gaultier's operation for $23.1 million in 1999, a
seemingly odd-couple pairing that caught the industry by surprise. The
infusion of cash will help Gaultier expand his retail operation, take
control of some of his licensing operations, such as jewelry, expand
into new categories such as timepieces and footwear, and boost his
international business

In 2000 Gaultier renewed his fragrance and cosmetics license with
Shiseido and Beauté Prestige International, a longtime alliance
known for its daring packaging. BPI launched Gaultier's
Fragile
fragrance in 2000 with a highly publicized snow globe package featuring
a tiny figure dressed in Gaultier couture. Meanwhile, the designer
expanded his licensee list with the additions of companies such as
Wolford, an Austrian luxury hosiery firm.

Despite positive critical reviews and a high profile, Gaultier's
revenues have been lower than many other couture labels; the Hermés
stake may cause this to change. But what will not change is
Gaultier's attention to hand-crafting and singular details, his
gender-and culture-crossing designs, and his sense of fun.

—CarolineCox;

updated by KarenRaugust

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